


SECRETS & BETRAYALS

by TheQueenofMirth



Category: The Folk of the Air - Holly Black
Genre: Betrayal, POV Third Person, Post-Book 2: The Wicked King, Secrets, Spoilers for Book 2: The Wicked King
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-11-13
Packaged: 2020-07-09 11:52:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 16,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19887256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheQueenofMirth/pseuds/TheQueenofMirth
Summary: Much time had passed since Jude Duarte was exiled in the mortal world. But now she's back to Elfhame and Cardan will not like to discover her reasons for coming back. Is Jude still the Queen of Nothing?





	1. The High King

* * *

_"He continues looking at me in this strange way,_  
_as though he’s never seen me before  
_ _or as though he thought he might never see me again."_

**\- The Wicked King, by Holly Black**

* * *

The High King entered his chambers with heavy steps and a haze of annoyance hovering him. No one was keeping him company. The door, shut with a bang, made evident his desire to not be disturbed. The night was almost gone and, when the sun rises, it was time to monsters sleep. The perfect moment to surprise them too.

Cardan searched for something in the room and, once he lost his temper, the powerful, the great, the smart and - unfortunately - unforgettable High King of Elfhame picked up a bottle of Golden Nevermore and plucked the cork with his teeth.

“That was hot.” Her voice was low and hoarse. He turned to see she sat in the dark waiting for his return. The cork fell of Cardan's lips. The two stood there, stock-still as if it were a competition.

He lost.

“How could you be here? I didn’t drink yet.”

“And tonight you won't need to drink.” She whispered as if it were a promise.

He went to her and knelt close enough to take her cheeks between his hands. The bottle was forgotten on the floor. His long fingers touched her face as if he feared that little pressure could make her disappear like she was made of fog. “You look so real.”

She should be angry. She was angry with him for driving her away from the only home she had ever known, from the world in which she was raised to be. Angry that he thought it was up to him to decide what she should do with her own life. Angry that he thought he should protect her against her own will. 

Angry with each of his visits, and the kisses exchanged between them, his sweet and true words - it was not as if he had a choice, anyways - his soft touch, his hunger, the longing between them.

But she was no longer angry. Time had taken it away. Or maybe it hadn’t been the time, maybe it had been...

“But, you can’t be here, can you?” Guilt hit her like a punch in the stomach. “You are dead.”


	2. You are dead

**_You are dead._** His words were devoid of hesitation. Just as people talked about harsh truths long accepted. That sunrises would be rough. But it was okay. It wasn’t like she hoped for something different. But, being frank, she felt insulted that he accepted the absurdity of becoming mad more easily than the absurdity that she was still alive.

He was one of those few who actually saw that she was capable of doing impossible things possible. When she was no one in Fairie, she made herself a spy, crowned a king, made him a puppet, commanded Elfhame for months, and - even by name alone - she became a faerie queen. And those were just the things he _knew_.

So much had happened ever since.

“I’m here now.” She placed her hands on top of his.

“My sweet villain,” He was reverently amazed. “even when I imagine you, you're still a liar.” It was not his intention, but his words stung. Because he was right.

“Two lies, one truth.” It was a game, one she had used to play very often. “The sky is green, I’m not using any underwear now and I missed you.”

He grinned with amusement. “Now, I don’t know what I want more to be true. A green sky sounds like something I would like to see.”

Without a smile at all, she slid down from the couch onto his lap, forcing Cardan to sit on his heels. Her hands were on his shoulders. Her knees, on his sides. She whispered in his ear “It’s me.”

A shiver went through his body. “Jude.” He moaned her name in reply, a name so old she could not even remember when she had last heard it.

She missed him. The arrogant voice tone, the cruel words, the wicked smiles, and the soft lips. His gazes that she never knew how to interpret right, his black eyes like nothing else in the world and the heat in them. She missed arguing, being insulted and insulting. She missed Cardan in every possible way.

She missed him in ways that no one should miss anybody.

Obviously, he missed her, too. She could felt that in the way his hands gripped her waist and pushed her firmly into his lap, and in the kisses which he spread across her shoulders and into her cleavage as if he'd drawn a constellation on her skin. In his dazzled gaze. But mainly, she could felt _in_ _his lap_.

And once, Cardan knew why she was there, he will not miss her anymore.

"You drove me crazy.” He whined as she had hurt him. And it hurt her to know that she did.

Her fingers were in the curls of his hair when they spread themselves in the floor kissing and rolling inside the space between the couch and a low table. She was the top when the door opened as silently as only a spy could do. It's too late when she realized.

She lifted her head, loose hair flew backward, no daggers in her hand. And it wasn’t because she wasn’t prepared to be caught in this kind of situation. But because she was on top of the High King, a position where it was safest to be caught without a weapon. After all, the fewer explanations to give, the better.

The Roach and The Bomb were there, looking to her as if she were a blurred image. Not seeing or not believing in what they saw. Scared of the true, scared of the hope. Or, at least, The Bomb looked like that.

The Roach looked like... The Roach.

Cardan stared them upside down, his eyebrows meeting in confusion.

“Wait, you can see Jude, too?” His voice was pure disbelief.

In seconds, Cardan was at the top of her. He had been so fast that she didn’t realize what was happening until it had happened. Her jaw caught between his wrathful fingers before he asked “Who- _No_. What. Are. You?” He was not just choleric, he was offended. “How you _dare_?”

“It’s me, Cardan.”

“Jude is dead.” She must prove that she was Jude, or at least that she was _her_ at some point.

She hit him in a spot that made his full arm lost strength as Bomb once taught her how to do. They rolled until she was in the top again.

“In the first time I kissed you, you liked it more than you will ever admit.”

“This is no proof, it’s just presumption.” Even imprisoned under his mortal wife, who, a few minutes before, thought to be no more than a hallucination, Cardan still had the bearing of a king. The bearing of a High King.

“ _I think of you. Often. It's disgusting, and I can't stop_.” She could bet her own life that he had never confessed those words to anyone else. And she did. “That's enough?”

“Can’t be _you_.”

“It’s _me_.”

“You-” Emotions danced in his eyes like at a faerie ball. Which means, in a beautiful and dangerous way as no mortal could go along and simply be fine. Then, each of these emotions disappeared leaving behind an unreadable face.

Slowly, without taking his eyes off hers, Cardan sat down with elegance forcing his Queen to do the same with much less grace.

“You two are supposed to protect my life, aren’t you?” The High king talked to his spies, but he faced her. The two of them stay there, not many sure how to proceed.

“We can’t attack the-.” _Queen._ The word can be heard even in its absence. So they knew. That would be helpful.

“How did you get in High King’s chambers, kid?” Roach spoke carefully as if trying to tame a beast with mild words.

“The same way as the day we first meet.” She looked toward a servant uniform threw on the back of the couch. But the spy's gaze didn’t leave her to check if it is a truth or a lie.

“Perhaps we should ask her how she entered in Faerie at all, or when she did so. Or, _why she doesn’t come back until now?_ ” Cardan threw the question in the same way she threw knives when she wanted _to kill_ something.

Seemingly, the honeymoon was over.

“We should leave.” The Bomb was looking uncomfortable, dazed and as if about to throw up.

“No. If my wife can wait so much time to speak to me again, she couldn’t possibly have the urge to do so. But you, who entered my room after I give express orders to-”

“Cardan.” She tried to touch him, but he pulled away.

“No, Jude. _No_ .” He didn’t raise his voice, he never needed it to make anyone felt smaller. Or show his anger. “You left me. I waited for you. For news. For an army ready to take me off the throne. For an overnight visit and a dagger against my throat. But you never came, you left me. Decades went by, I thought you were dead. Dead, Jude. _Dead_ .” Ever time he says the word it was like being hit. Again. Again. And _again_. “You left me and then you let me think you were dead. Who does this with her own husband?”

She wanted to say many things, that an army or a dagger was worse in a normal marriage than disappearing without giving news. As expel the wife from home. And that using the word dead four times was unnecessary. With one she would have understood the message, and two would give the emphatic tone. She knew what she had done. She never could forget, there was no way to do so.

Mostly she wanted to have words to explain that she was afraid of him. Not afraid of love him, - if it was only that she would have come back in half of time or less - but afraid of him. Like when she was a kid and learned what real fear felt like. But before she talked about it, before she risks everything she fought for, she needed to know something.

“Cardan, I need a _divorce_."


	3. Divorce

**_Divorce_** _._ She faced the three of them. They weren't surprised or shocked, and although Cardan was already overstrung, she realised that none of them knew what divorce was.

Divorce didn't exist in Faerie. For mortals separations were about changing an agreement that didn't fit anymore for a new one. But, for faeries, it was about to fulfil what was agreed upon. So she had to be sure about what was agreed upon between them. About the wording. “Bomb, Roach, I request a moment alone with the King.”

They didn't leave.

“What is a ‘divorce', Jude?” Cardan might not know what it was, but he delivered the words carefully as if he could recognize a threat in them.

Her mouth opened and closed and she said nothing. She could not. She didn't want to. But then she remembered that she had more important things to defend that a facade wedding.

Cardan saw the change in her and something in him changed too. This time he looked to his spies when he said: “You two, wait outside of the room.”

“Your majesty,” said The Roach, “I must disagree. I'd hate to know we let one of you do something you'd regret. Very much." She felt something cold spread inside her. That was a threat to her, their Queen. Her thumb found her ring finger and circled it over and over. Or maybe it wasn't. Perhaps she was becoming paranoiac. After the last days, it would not come as a surprise.

“Your concerns were heard and taken into account.” And, with an unconcerned hand gesture, Cardan dismissed them again. “Get out.”

"She did not come here as a Queen or a wife would do,” Roach tried again “but as a spy or an assassin." Truth be told, she was all the four and she had never practised the wife part.

“Do not worry. She's not here to kill me."

Cardan stood up and gallantly extended a hand to help her do the same. She did not need help for this, but she accepted. Partly because she knew how good he was reading actions and words and how important it was to send the right message. And partly because she wanted to feel connected to him, the way she could be and for as long as she could have that.

Even when they were already standing, he did not let her hand go.

"How would you know?"

His eyes were locked in his wife’s when he answered Bomb. "She missed her best chance." Her heart went crazy. Yes, if she wanted him dead, he would be. Cardan could _see_ her and she loved the session of been acknowledged. Long ago she had understood that, to her, it was was like faerie fruit, sweet and dangerous.

The spies left and a part of her became sad. She had to talk with them, she wanted to say that she was sorry to Bomb. To both - they had been teachers, coworkers and, in a strange way, her friends - but mostly to Bomb. She still could remember the conversation about Bomb life they had in Eldred’s bed. A nice and intimate conversation as she could never have had even with her sisters.

But they were gone now.

The High King walked backwards pulling his Queen by their joined hands. He seated on the couch and pulled her to his lap. They seated together mixing themselves. An arm around her waist. A hand behind his neck. Other above his heart. Fingers tightening her thigh. Fingers mingling with his hair. They faced each other from a very close distance. His eyes were made of charcoal and they're burning.

She did not know if he did that motivated by desire or because he wanted to seduce her secrets away. She assumed, both.

“What is a ‘divorce’, Jude?” His voice was tender, the same way it would be if he was _not_ simmering in ire.

Between every possible way she could try to explain, she chose to say: “We said until we don’t want anymore.” And it was enough because he understood its meaning.

“You” He kissed behind her ear “did not” and he kissed a little lower “seem” and a little lower “inclined” and lower “to ‘divorce’” and he continued between each word “before they came in." She sighed.

It would be a rough sunrise, indeed. And he should prepare himself.

“You're still hateful.” She said and then paused. The kisses stopped and Cardan’s body got tense. “I still want you.” Her nails sweetly scratched the scruff of his neck and his body responded as if lightning had crossed it. “I’m still difficult.” She kissed the side of his mouth.” You still want me. And you know what? We don’t need to be married to that.” He laughed dryly.

Pissing off the Folk always was her most reliable talent. And sometimes, a curse. “Is it like that? Are you the difficult one and me hateful? Are you _sure_?”

“We are both those things. Do you disagree?” He did not answer.

“Why ‘divorce’? Why now?”

She looked at his lips and let him see that. She was trying to stun him with other thoughts. But when his lips parted, she was the stunned one. “It matters?” Her voice was needier than she expected to be. A wicked grins show up in his face. It made it hard to her breathe, hard to think. But the spell lasted little, he broke it himself.

“No.”

_No?_

He had to be lying. Except that he could not. Which meant, for Cardan, it did not matter. A wave of disgust took her, leaving her submerged on the desire of hurting him badly.

Impulsively and against her better judgment, she began to say “I, Jude Duarte,” Her old name left a bad taste in her mouth. She no longer recognized herself in it anymore. “mortal ward of Madoc, don-”

He stopped her capping her mouth with his fingers. “Don’t you dare.” No wicked grin showed in his face now. Nothing showed in his face.

“I thought this did not matter.” When she talked her lips rubbed against his finger. Cardan closed his eyes in appreciation.

“You need not take offence, my Queen. It does not matter because we're not going to 'divorce'. We will ‘ _be wed until we don’t want to be and the crown has passed from our hands’_. Your words, not mine.” He remembered the exact words she used on that day many years ago. When younger, she envied strength and reflex of the folk, now above that she envied their vicious memory.

An ‘and’, not an ‘or’. Two conditions. This meant that if she chose to do what she needed to do alone, first she would have to make him pass the crown to Oak - The brother she didn't see in almost one hundred years - and then say the words. That was a possibility. A complicated one. 

She was prepared to hear this. Now she had to decide what she would do. And do it quickly.

“I know you haven't spoken to your brother, but when my nephew visits me he doesn't seem anxious to replace me on the throne. In fact, he seems very happy to live as a wild faerie with Viviane.” Cardan was touching one side of her head, behind the ear. She had shaved both sides of her head like in a mohawk haircut. She wore no horns braids anymore. She didn't try to look like one of them. She preferred to highlight what marked her as human. “A life without responsibilities, I understand the calling. Do you?”

She thought about the most important responsibilities she had. “No.”

He looked a bit disappointed, a bit proud. “I can guess this much about you.”

Cardan leaned over her until they were lying on the couch supporting his weight on the backrest. He kissed her slowly and lingeringly. His patience made her impatient. She let her fingers greedily spread out in his back. She wanted to feel his body against her, but she knew that if she pulled him to her they wouldn't have a chance to discuss anymore.

“Jude, even if you convinced your brother, you would not convince me.” She knew part of pass the crown involved convince him to do it but, maybe had been the kiss, she was not following his thoughts. He noticed that and he stopped kissing just to be sure she understood. “until _we_ don’t want to be. Have to be both of us.” Her heart skipped a beat. "You should pay more attention when bargaining with fairies." He smiled like a trickster.

He was back to kiss her, this time his mouth found her throat. Her head was spinning faster than ever and wasn't because of his lips. Cardan was the first to say the marriage votes. He was the one how delimited its terms. She could not imagine why would he chose something like that. Be bond to her until he could convince her to free him. He was clever than that. This was not an advantage.

Unless it was.

Unless he wanted them to stay bonded. A bond that she could not simply break by herself. But this was unthinkable. He would not want that.

“You are saying that we can only separate if we pass the crown _and_ agree? That is impossible.” That was craziness. “We do not _agree_.”

Cardan stopped and looked in her eyes. He did not get that her head was spinning. He thought she was angry when it was only confusion. “If I could, I would say that I hated to ruin your plans of ‘divorce’, but we both know I can not lie.” No cold shoulder now. His emotions were escaping his control. He was wrathful. “You could have had your fun, but you are mine in a way you will never be any ones.”

“Have my _fun_?”

He gently explained with poison in his voice. “Your cheeks used to blush when we were together.”

“Is that what is bothering you? My flushed cheeks?” These days she didn't get flushed anymore. Time, lovers and experience had taken it away from her and that made him furious.

No, that made him _jealous_.

She almost laughed. But she knew if she did, she would cry next. So much was wrong in their situation that jealous seemed like a small thing to worry about.

“You back after almost a century and ask me for ‘divorce’. Nothing was important enough to make you return before. What happened? Did you receive a better propose?” Perhaps it had been his intention to sound mocking, but he seemed anxious.

Cardan had faced that reencounter better than she supposed he would so she felt she could let him have that. “None that I’m inclined to accept.” The answer didn't seem to satisfy him.

“So what is happening, Jude? What is so important?”

She could probably get out of this situation on her own. For her entire life, she made her plans, fulfilled her goals and conquered which was supposed to be beyond her reach. Alone it was easy - Difficult was to trust - but, also, a risk. And what she would risk, what she could lose, it had a high price. So maybe it was better to ask for help. And beyond her, no one else had as much to lose as Cardan did. Even though he still did not know that.

And if she was going to include him, she had to tell him things, secrets that she wanted to keep undercover. But if she had learned something with their dramatic story was that whenever they tried to control the situation on their own, whenever they chose to trick one another, they did not get what they really wanted.

Therefore she was about to hear a piece of advice from someone who should not give her advice. Someone who should listen to her guidance. But he never listened, which was part of the problem that brought her there.

She took a deep breath. There was no easy way to say it. "We have a son."


	4. A son

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry it took so long.

**_A son_.** She said nothing more. It seemed the kind of news people need time to absorb. Fairies could not be so different.

Cardan froze. They stayed there for a moment, leaned against the other, too close - intimately close - to what was about for happen. His face was empty. But this time was not because he was hiding something. Her husband was in some kind of shock.

“I did not-” _understand you? heard you?_ Those would be lies that he could not speak.

There wasn't much between which she had done that she would like to apologise. Neither, much fairies to whom she would like to apologise for. It was not like she had not done many things that hurt others. But she did not feel like she should carry the blame on her back for the most of that. But their son was Cardan's first and - she knew - only kid. Faerie children were rare and he had lost all their son's childhood. The guilt had been hitting her in the stomach ever since she discovered the pregnancy. Because, even at that moment, she knew she would not come back to him.

At the moment, she also felt fear. She was alone - no husband, no father, no sisters, no family at all - and in unsafe places making risky business. And, at the same time, it was like knew about Madoc before opening the door and see him for the first time. Not that she thought Cardan was like Madoc or she was like Eva. They were not. Not at all. They had their own special way of messing up things between them. And they were very good at it, champions indeed.

A thunderstorm began in the same moment Cardan backed off her. The noise of falling drops outside was high enough to wake those who were sleeping in Elfhame. The High King was not looking at his wife anymore. His gaze was lost in someplace beyond his windows.

His Queen sat up and let him have his time.

“You are lying to me?” His question had not been an accusation. It had been confused and hollow. Yet, she felt a sting.

“He is clever and charming like you.”

She had brought photos - because one gaze to his son was enough to prove she was telling the truth - and was about to give to him when he said as if he had just understood one of the great life’s mysteries, “You left me because you were pregnant.”

The photographs almost slipped between her fingers.

“ _No_.” She tried to be emphatic, but it didn't seem enough. “I _didn’t_ know when I left.” She could not even imagine how he'd come to that conclusion. As if he could think she wouldn’t want them to know each other, as if she had not wanted Cardan's help to understand their son. His thoughts, desires and afflictions, which she had not been faerie enough to relate.

“If you knew, it would change anything?” She hadn’t an answer to that question. She had always refused to think about any hypothesis of discovering the pregnancy before leaving him. She did not know if she would still have the same courage to do so, the same willpower. But she would want to have.

“We will not have a chance to find out.”

“And now you can be evasive like a fairy.” Cardan’s voice showed his disgust. What was ironic. She could lie with truthful words because every time she did, she thought _how Cardan would say it_?In some way, had been he who taught her.

He turned to her again, but he had not been able to recover his poker face. His pain and resentment were as obvious as an open wound. “Why you left me?” 

“Cardan.” She tried to warn him.

“No.” He grabbed her by the arms. His grip strong enough to hurt. “You will answer to me.” She had done wrong, but she would not let him treats her poorly.

With a simple movement learned when she was still young before she hadn't even met him, she got rid of his grip. “I didn’t want that life, Cardan.”

For three years after their wedding, their life had been made of secrets encounter as constant as the tide. He had gone to her when he could - because he was the High King and had appointments - and she had to decide between dropping everything that she was doing - sometimes delaying weeks of work - or losing the chance to see him without knowing when they would have another opportunity. She had taken the two options several times, every time she regretted it, no matter which she chose. “I wanted power and I always worked hard to have any, you know it. You really expected that I would sit there and wait for you?” That was no life for her. “You know me better than that.”

And he grinned like he had listened to the best joke ever. “So foolish of me think I would be enough.”

He was bitter. And bitterness showed something that she was too busy kissing him to realize before. The High King of Elfhame looked like a monster more than ever. His presence was in the air around them, spreading and taking up space. Absolute and domineering. Very similar to his father, - or any ruler in faerie - but much more intensity. It was the same thing that made her feel happy about Eldred’s hand in her head when she bowed to him.

But she wouldn’t bow to Cardan.

“It wasn’t like that.”

“Please, Jude." He faced her again, grinning this time. "We two know exactly why you married me. I let you think you would be Elphame's Queen.” _But not for too long_.She thought with tepid resentment. “And I did not let you have what you really wanted.”

 **True power isn't granted. True power can't be taken away.** Madoc had said the words, but it was Cardan who taught that lesson. And she had learned. “ _I am_ a Queen.”

“In name, and in name only.” He mocked her. She opened her mouth ready to respond but stopped herself. She wasn't there to argue. She put the photos on the table hoping he looked in that direction.

He didn’t.

Instead, he kept trying to provoke her. "And how did you create our son, dear wife? Is he as hungry power, bloodthirsty and disloyal as you?” She could forgive him for had said this much, but not for what he suggested next. “It must have been a difficult childhood with a mother like _you_ ."

She had been a mortal mother raising a gentry child in the midst of fairies. When their son was still a kid, in courts, she had been frequently confused with his servant. She had been provoked and insulted. Her maternal love had been used against her more than one time. _You will die in the dawn of his life. Why make him suffer like that?_ The folk thought, gossiped and suggested that she didn't deserve the _honour_ of raise her _own_ baby. Some tried to take him away from her using glamour, bargains and weapons. She had to keep him safe from her own enemies and Elfhame's.

“You'll never insult me again by saying something like that." Her voice thundered in the room. "Our son was breastfed by me and not abandoned with a cat. He was never barefoot or dressed in rags. He was never neglected.” Cardan's eyes opened wide. She had never said that she knew about all that. “He was protected and loved and cared. I was not perfect, but his childhood was as good as me and you will ever know.”

“You loves him.” That wasn’t a question and that was no need for an answer. If she wasn't out of her balance, she maybe had noticed the tone of his voice. But she was, so she didn't.

“I raised him well.” Her hands were in his blouse - clenched fists, the tissue between fingers - and she had no idea how they end up there. She let him go. “Cardan you are curious about my motives to be here or you just want to piss me off? I have more important things to spend my time on.” She tried a threat.

Cardan let his body lean against the back of the sofa as if he were relaxed. But she had already seen snakes about to strike more relaxed than him. But he gave her what she wanted.

Almost.

"Tell me, how had a son lead us to divorce? According to human customs, is not it quite the opposite?" It was a waste explaining to any faerie that just being a human did not attribute knowledge about the mortal world, so she didn’t lose her time and patience trying.

“I have reasons to believe that he has been held hostage by Diarmuid.” A sharp gaze was the only sign of recognition that Cardan gave. There was no way he could not recognize the name. The King Underground was one of his worst enemies. Their armies were facing each other on battlefields not so far from Elfhame. And the result of that war was uncertain.

“I assume you were not bragging about being the mother of an Elfhame's prince. So how he found that the boy is mine? And why are you thinking the ‘divorce’ can solve anything? Because that made no sense, the boy will continue to be my heir.”

 _His heir_ , which was exactly the problem.

“He didn't find it out yet. But Diarmuid will kill our son _when_ he finds out.” It was not a question of 'if', that would happen sooner or later.

“If it is not because of me, what you have done to anger him?”

“Nothing.” Cardan laughed theatrically.

“Jude,” He grinned and threw back her own words. “I know you better than that.”

And just because he was been rude, she responded without mercy. She spoke slowly, savouring the words and expression of shock on his face. “He _proposed_ to me.”

A sequence of thunders filled what could have been a long silence.

“I need wine.” He muttered to himself. 

That was her sign. She stood up. “And I need to go back.” She was worried, Cardan did not seem very troubled about their son. Not about kidnapping or about anything else. The only question that the father asked about his son had been just out of spite. Her family history was not the best, his' was simply tenebrous.

Still leaning on the couch, he laughed without joy. “Why the rush? Late for your wedding?”

“I have to pretend to him that I didn’t discover it yet.”

“To _him_ ?” He stood up and hold her wrist pulling her gently until she was looking at him. “You are going to meet at _Diarmuid_ ?” 

“Not immediately, but yes. We have a _meeting_.” She was proud of sound so annoyed and not on edge.

“Jude, if he finds out about us-”

“He would send my head in a pretty box to you with a nice letter.” She was not guessing. She knew better than him. “And because it seemed like he was losing focus, she said “And then he would do the same with our _son_. But he will not find out. Not today or tomorrow.”

“How many time before he finds out?”

She pulled her arm free. She did not know. “I will be back tomorrow in sunrises. Do you prefer that I meet you here or in Shadow Court?”

“You will let me choose?” His eyebrows went up. “How nice of you.”

“ _I’m_ being nice.” He sighed deeply and all condescension vanished from his face.

He pulled her to him again. “So be nice to me one more time.” And then he kissed her again. It was a slow and careful kiss almost like he was exploring, or as if he didn't know how she liked to be kissed. But before she could lose herself in it, he moved away leaving a feeling of something unfinished and her arms empty. Her legs trembled and a sigh escaped through her lips. 

He was trying to play her.

“You cannot trust this to anyone besides Bomb and Roach." She said to his back. Cardan was halfway to the door. "You have a leaking.”

“And how you know that?” An honest answer to that would take a lot more questions, so she simply ignored it.

And there is one much more important question that he had not asked. “Your son’s name is Bran.”


	5. Bran

**_Bran_**. At that moment, he had almost stopped halfway toward the door. Jude had said the name with so much disappointment that it felt like an accusation. As if she had the right. _She left him._ And she didn't even have the courtesy to leave a note behind. 

Cardan had waited and waited, hoping her to come back to him even if to revenge herself. His spies had sought out her for years without finding any clue of her whereabouts. Which was no different at the times when Cardan went see her in the mortal world and Jude was too busy with some dangerous scheme to find him. None of his spies could tell what she was doing then, neither where or with whom she was.

He had been terrified - She could have been hurt or in need of his help. She could have been dead and then he would never see her ever again. He thought she had died, if not by the violence, by the passage of years. And even so, he could not grieve her death. Without a prove or clue about what had happened, there was no resolution. She had left him in a miserable stage of eternal waiting for answers he would never have. But now Jude was back with news. And he didn't how to feel about it, any of it.

Cardan's late mortal wife was alive and not so mortal after all. And, of course, they had a son. A grown-up son who had been kidnapped for a dangerous, bloodthirsty and hungry-power maniac, with whom Cardan was at war and whom his wife had a _meeting_. The thought tasted like sour wine. They were close enough for him to _propose_ to her. Jude could have said that she wasn’t inclined to accept any proposal, but she could lie. And Cardan was realistic enough to admit that Jude and Diarmuid had at least three things in common.

Jude hadn't come back for Cardan. She obviously could, but she didn't. She had abandoned him for her own free will. Maybe she did never plan to go back to him ever. For all those years he had thought that nothing would be worse than doubt. But the certainty was more painful. The feelings were overwhelming. He couldn't go through that, not in the moment. Cardan knew he should keep his head. Jude had back for a reason, he had to find which.

His Queen was a player of dangerous games. It would be no surprise if she had gotten into one more.

 _She wanted to_ divorce _._

_Diarmuid had proposed her._

_Her son had been kidnapped by the Unseelie King._

_Diarmuid didn't know about the boy's parentage or that Jude was aware of his actions._

The clues are easy to put together. - Diarmuid kidnapped the boy to use him if Jude rejects him. And Jude wanted to choose the safer path, whatever that meant to her. Divorce to marry again or take her son back before saying no. - Maybe too easy.

If she were telling the truth, why would a faerie King wanted to marrie a mortal woman? Jude was remarkable, yet a mortal. He could desire her, even love her. Still, the position of a lover or a consort would fit better.

But Diarmuid was Unseelie and despised mortals as Cardan never was able to do. He couldn't want to be married to one of them. Jude had to have something to give in return. Whatever it was, it wasn't her son. The way she reacted when he doubted her as a mother was earnest. The boy was real and her weak spot and maybe Cardan's too.

If the boy was High King's heir, Cardan couldn't let Diarmuid have him. There were only two possibilities and since Cardan has no desire to start ordering executions, especially his son's, he knew the boy would have to be rescued.

That could be a misdirection. From Diarmuid's? Jude's? She wanted to be a Queen before, but Cardan had frustrated her. If she could win that war against the High King, it could be a reason for the Unseelie King to marry her.

But if she could defeat Cardan why be Diarmiud's Queen at all? Jude was already High Queen.

Maybe she was just telling the truth and Diarmuid was the one being fooled by her. Cardan couldn't even separate his hopes and fears of his reasoning. For the moment he had to remember that Jude liked to use bold moves and whatever her move would be, she wanted High King participation.

If she has been sincere, Jude needed his help and that was the only reason for coming back. But, of course, she hadn't _asked_ for any. She had come, told the news and expected him to get involved. Jude had expected him to worry about that brat. But he could not even imagine why he should worry about someone he had never met instead of worrying about her. The idea that he had a child was still just an idea. Cardan could not even imagine how he should react to that. 

His gaze went to the gold stain on the floor. At some point, they had kicked the bottle. Probably when they rolled across the floor as if they had yearned for touch the other for almost one hundred years. And may they had. That day was the 93rd anniversary of her disappearance and Cardan had planned a self-pity party which Jude had ruined by appearing in their room alive and unharmed.

Cardan didn't want to face his feelings, but it was impossible when outside his window a storm took the sky. Like in his wed, he found it embarrassing how Elfhame could so easily expose him.

Jude had vanished in the air. _Again_. Turned his back on her had been a mistake, walk to the door had been another. Because when Liliver and Van entered in his chambers for the second time in that night, Jude was gone as if she was the hallucination he had believed she was. If he hadn't seen they looking for her without an order to do so, he would not believe that she had been there.

Van, wet of rain, entered the chambers. He was good with his sly foot, but not good as his Queen. “Always full of surprises, isn’t she?” 

“If we're lucky, fewer surprises than we can handle. You found anything?”

“No, your Highness. It's like she has not even been here.” Fear squeezed Cardan's stomach. Of all ways, Van could express himself that had been the most terrifying. “She was good before, but now...” 

_...she is more dangerous than ever._ Liliver and Van could be thinking about her spy abilities, which she obviously had improved, but Cardan thought about the way she had deliberately touched him. Before she had never tried to seduce him. She used to be inexperienced and modest with flushed cheeks and raw desire. In that time, she would have never thought about doing something like that to him. But, apparently, the idea had occurred to her finally.

He had lost the practice of resisting his wife to long ago. If she was determined to lure him, he suspected that he would become I merry fool very soon.

The tension in the room grew with the High King's silence. Van didn't know what to say. The girl had been there, not for too long, but she had. He didn't know how to feel about it. He could be happy for the boy if he wasn't so worried. Jude was older than the last time they saw her but not as old as she should be. She hadn't been in Elfhame, so how could she still be that young?

It was Liliver who broke the silence. “I’m relieved that she is okay.” She tried to sound high spirited, but everything she got was anxious.

The corner of Cardan lips turned up mischievously, but he didn't give them a commented. Van cleared his throat hoping that a little encouragement could change it. “So, what brought her back to the marriage bed?”

Cardan chuckled. “She looked concerned about the safety of the prince of Faerie.”

The spies exchanged looks as if they were about the answer a trap question. “Oak is fine.”

“Not that one.” A mischievous part of Cardan was happy not to be on the scandalized side of the conversation. “I believe she was talking about _my son_.”

The Roach choked, probably, on all the questions that statement raised or with the complete discomfort of being caught between in a Royal marital strife. Liliver's eyes, widely opened, were revealing everything she tried to keep hidden. But she was too discreet to not try.

Their discomfort was in a strange way comforting for Cardan.

He took the little portraits trying to not let his hands shake. And then he had to resist the desire to thrown them in the table again.

In the first one, the brat was no more a brat. He was all grow up and looking as arrogant and wicked as he could become. The boy had Jude’s colours - darker skin and lighter eyes than Cardan’s - yet someone could look at mother and son and never guess so. They did not resemble each other. In another hand, it seemed impossible that anyone who knew Cardan could look at his son and not know.

They had a son. _Cardan_ had a son. He was someone’s _father_.

He almost felt sorry for the boy. 

Jude arranged the portraits backwards. He saw a happier version of himself who had been in both worlds, mortal and faerie. In Seelie and Unseelie courts. But they did not reveal too much. Cardan did not recognize any of those places and, at the same time, he found them very familiar. His wife had paid close attention to them and to what she chose to show him.

Jude was there too. Never alone. This collection had a theme and it was not about her. But the ones in which she was had been his favourites. She teaching sword-play wet with sweat and holding up an arrogant smile. They dancing. She on a magnificent dress showing her bare shoulders. They lying on the grass with soundless laughter. A tired Jude sat in a bed, dressed a nightgown holding a fae boy in her arms. Looking to it as if it had glamoured her.

They were courtiers. His son had not grown up in an environment so different from the one in which Cardan grew up. Which meant wickedness and manipulation. But the portraits were stranger. Jude and... _Bran_ , they did not pose for them as Cardan had been taught to. In that portraits they smiled, pout, made faces, faking sadness, showed teeth, were taken by surprise.

They were playful.

He felt bitter and alone than ever.

His son was undeniably similar to him meant that to keep the secret, Jude had hidden far away from the reach of the High King’s power and far from everyone who knew her as his seneschal. And that meant _far_.

Maybe Cardan should be happy that Jude could love someone who resembles him so much. That she could love _his_ son. But all he could think was that even if the son had his face, Bran was not him.

Maybe it was what Jude had felt about Taryn. Maybe that was what Taryn had felt about Jude.

Cardan held up the photos toward Liliver. “Here.”

She smiled shy and apologetic. “Your Highness, it’s not my business.”

 _"Nonsense._ Gossip about the royal family had been always everybody's business. Take them before I change my mind.” And she took. Her eyes were hungerest than mortals who ate faerie fruit. She took her time in each as she needs time to understand what she was looking at.

Van looked from behind her shoulder. “He looks like you.” Liliver seemed strangely happy and Roach interested.

_He has a son, it was supposed to make him happy?_

“She said his name?”

“Bran.” He spat the name like it was poisoned and the spies politely faked not notice.

“ _Bran_. _Braaaan. Bran_. Good. I liked it.” Two of the three present wanted the father to pronounce on it. Cardan said nothing. But spies should not push their king against the wall, so Bomb questioned something which would lead them to subjects that spies should know. “He knows about you?” _Do you want one of us to go to him? Should we bring him to Elfhame?_

“I didn’t ask.” Until that moment Cardan had not thought that his son could know about him and chose not to meet him. Or that whatever Bran knew about his father would have come from gossips, enemies and rivals. Or from his mother, which could not be better. “Why you two came here tonight?”

“Oh, that.” Van scratched the tuft of hair on top of his head in an almost embarrassing way. “It will look silly right now, but we may have a problem.”


	6. Problems

**_Problems_** , she had as much of those as she had names. Katharina, Alessa, Martha, Adela. Rhiannon. And others.

In her Estate, her _home,_ she was Lady Isabel.

To Cardan, she was still Jude.

But she did not like that name. When she was Jude, everything she fought for, everything she conquered, she lost. The name Jude was still a joke in Elfhame. The mortal who thought she could be the High King’s Queen, a complete and hilarious joke, the biggest Queen of Mirth of all.

She hated it with all her heart.

Still, when she heard Cardan say the name for the first time, she couldn’t dislike it. Maybe because he said it in the same way he treated her when they had laid in her bed in the mortal world, with reverence and gratitude. She had never been able to dislike it, even while she had hated him in bitter silence. So, whenever he could and she allowed herself, she brought him to her messy mortal room.

But she could never sleep when he was there. Only after he left, she could fall into her nightmares. Perhaps it was to be expected that her fears were related with the time she spent captivity in the Undersea, however, they were filled with laughter from the faeries. Many times Jude had woke up sweaty, crying and grateful that Cardan was not there.

And even if Cardan were the one that brought her nightmares whenever he visited her, she still had received him. Many times.

She had not wanted to be that confused girl with that confused life. She did not want to be Jude Duarte anymore.

* * *

Lady Isabel entered the forest feeling grateful for the clouds that transformed which was to be a sunny day in partial darkness and for the noise of the storm. The Roach had lost her inside the Palace without realizing that at some point she had followed his trail.

Near the stable, a palace’s servant was waiting for her. That faerie was holding the reins of a yellow pony made of ragwort and magic. Something Isabel could not make in her own. Isabel rode the horse and thanked her politely with a nod, but without showing any indication of gratitude. That was not one favour.

To cross into faerie - her Estate included - and out, she would always need faerie's magic. A long time ago, it had bothered her, but not anymore. Because she did not depend on favours. It was her own power that guaranteed that the fairies were always there with the ragwort ponies for her.

First, she rode to, and through, the mortal world, and then toward her house.

Lady Isabel arrived when the sun was up and bright and the majority of servants sleeping. A common event. But even if it was something exceptional no one would make questions or gossip about it. They all were discreet. They had to be. Her servants had debts with her to be paid through years of service.

None of them could betray her even if they wanted to. Neither her spies. This was the good side of faeries, they could not break their oaths. The one who broke oaths was Rhiannon.

But, maybe, someone else had.

Isabel went to her bedroom and left her wet clothes on the floor. A night garment was waiting for her on the bed. She dressed it and fell over the coverlets. After three nights without sleep, she was tired.

She should rest to keep her mind sharp and her healthy appearance because when Diarmuid saw her tired eyes, he would make questions. Wrong answers would condemn Bran to death. Yet, it was impossible to putt her mind at ease.

She had told to Cardan that he had a leak, but it was much worse than that.

 _She_ had a leak. And she had no idea where it was.

Her network of spies was large and complex. They were in every Court she knew, including High King’s. Until she was sure it had no committed part, it was too dangerous to use them or let them know anything.

Every time she tried to understand who could have betrayed her and, most importantly, _how_ , she ended up very confused and with a headache. It was an impossible equation.

Her thoughts spun faster and faster. _Bran. Cardan. Bomb. Roach. Diarmuid. Grimsen. Danger. Complications. Apologies. Forgiveness. Treason. Wrath. Revenge._ She sat up in bed unable to breathe. There were tears in her eyes that she refused to let go.

She didn’t know who, but, when this story was over, someone would be dead.

Isabel laid down again, rolled from one side of the bed to the other. But she could not sleep.

 _Cardan did not even ask for Bran's name._ The thought filled her with pain. Cardan did not look concerned with their son or interested in him. But she refused to accept the possibility that he might just not care about him. _That was too much for anyone process, he just needed time._

But she didn't have time. Maybe she could make him help just offering a solution to win the war. That could be enough to convince Cardan to help her. Diarmuid had been a problem to Elfhame for too long. 

And if neither of those reasons was enough, she could threaten him. She had the right secrets to make sure that Elfhame stood or fell. Isabel never wanted to use them, but, for Bran’s sake, maybe she would.

A silly part of her - which she would rather never hear - wondered if Cardan would do that for her. The High King looked concerned about her safety even after he discovered that she had abandoned him and left him in mourning.

But he should not be concerned about her. She was capable to handle herself. It was with their son she could not handle. Bran was stupid in his arrogance. And he had a lot of arrogance to keep him doing stupid things.

_Spoiled boy._

A knock on the door caught her attention. “Your ladyship?”

“Come in, Dariyah.” The Imp entered the room and opened the curtains. Outside, the stars shined like diamonds.

Isabel lost her opportunity to sleep.

“You look tired, my Lady.” Dariyah put two fingers in one of her Lady’s cheeks and pulled it down to see the dark circle, but her sharp nails did not touch the skin. “When you don’t sleep properly, you make my work harder than in need to be.”

“Your problem, not mine.” Isabel slapped the Imp’s hand away without streng enough to hurt. That assured her in return a disdainful _Tsk Tsk._

“So let’s talk about some of _your problems_ ,” Dariyah smirked with petty malice and mockery. “The guards found a stranger on the property, Grimsen arrived and we cannot find Arion.”


	7. Arion

* * *

_"Of course, then the question becomes whether I deserve to have all this power."_

**The Wicked King, by Holly Black**

* * *

**_Arion_** was a secret that she didn’t want to reveal to Cardan. A faerie kid who had lost her parents in a brutal way and now lived on Isabel's tutelage. A wild pooka undisciplined, who was great at getting secrets and awful at keeping them to herself. She was no spy material.

And, of course, Arion was her granddaughter.

Nothing could keep the girl where she didn't want to be. And it had saved her life once. But it brought considerable trouble for Isabel. Or for Martha. Or for Rhiannon.

The ladyship changed her clothes. Dariyah chose a simple, yet elegant dress for her. Good enough to please Grimsen and comfortable to fight without bothering to see it slide down through her body. Thin straps, barebacks and deep necklines aren’t her favourites for a reason.

Isabel sat ahead her dressing table and let her servant's expert hands tidy her hair until the strands resembled a turbulent waterfall. Throughout the process, she looked at her face in the mirror. She no longer saw Taryn there, Isabel had no idea how her sister was at age 26. The woman in the reflection had no wrinkles yet, but she wasn’t as young as the High King remembered. She looked older than him. She asked herself what her husband had thought about that.

Cardan didn’t look one day older than the last day they saw each other. Less the eyes, they had that in common.

Dariyah placed the hair over Isabel's shoulder. It was long enough to descend to the shoulder blades, ride up to the shoulder and then to spill down until her hip. She had forgotten to cut. Five years ago. Dariyah insisted that she forget.

The imp pinched her cheeks. “You're a challenge, girl.”

 _Girl_ , it was how Dariyah always called her to imply that she was young. But at the moment, it just remembered her how old she became.

“Look for Arion. Say to her we need to talk. I want her waiting for me when I get back.” And with that command, she left an angry imp behind.

Isabel went for the drawing-room, Grimsen was waiting for her. When she entered the room, the blacksmith stood up in respect and slightly bowed to her.

The double door closed behind her back and very slowly she walked towards her armchair richly brocade with gold thread. She sat majestically. Her elbow on the arm of the chair, her face in her hand. “Shouldn’t you send me a letter before you visit me? You know, for _courtesy_ .”

“I bring interesting news.”

 _For a change_. Her thought was sour. 

“How nice of you.” Isabel made a gesture for the couch behind the blacksmith and he sat down. “But I have no need for gifts or favours.”

He laughed as if the idea of fooling her with puns had never occurred to him. But they knew better. “It’s a tribute, of course.” His eyes were alive with excitement and his smile trickly like in the first time she saw him. No good would come for his words. But didn’t listen wouldn’t help her either

She sighed. “So, ‘interesting’ you said.”

It is impossible to explain how unprepared she was for what was said next. “Madoc came to see me.” A chill went up to her spine. Grimsen waited for her ask something, but all she did was lift one eyebrow. “He made me promise not to tell anyone about what he requested me. And I agreed.” Then nothing more would be said on the subject. Fortunately, it wasn’t hard to imagine what Madoc was requiring. Blade or not, he wanted a weapon.

“You said ‘interesting’, but it just Madoc acting like himself.” She shrugged. “I’m not surprised.”

_It’s so nice to be able to lie._

“Neither are you pleased?”

“Now, you are just misleading yourself. I’m pleased enough to inform you that I have another surprise guest and - if you swear not to speak out loud, not to write or express as song anything you had seen or heard, or anything that you are about to hear or see inside this house in this day - I will be delighted to invite you to witness our conversation.”

With bright eyes and a trickly smile, he swore.

Isabel led him to her office through a secret passage. A goblin was handcuffed by iron to the ground in the middle of the room. In the walls, secrets. Maps, letters, fabrics, notes, empty and full flasks hanged on nails. Half of that secrets were false, manufactured for misdirection. The rest - however true they maybe - aren’t much difficult to discover. But all that secrets had something in common, none of them was one of _hers_.

Isabel's secrets were not foolishly hung on walls or written in letters. She didn’t dare whisper them to herself. They were very dangerous. Her son true name. His father's identity. What she and Cardan were. What Bran could be one day. Fairies would kill each other to know less. And they would risk dying too. Like that goblin.

“It was very clever of you to find my lands,” Isabel leaned against her desk, a monstrous structure of carved wood showing all marvel strangeness of a revel, and faced a black and cold pair of eyes . “and very stupid to dare to step on them.”

The handcuff shook when the goblin got up. “You don’t scare me, mortal .” He couldn’t stand erect because of the cuff, but he still was taller than her.

“So” She stopped as if she needed that time to realize. “ _you are a fool_.”

“I swore to say nothing. Even if you torture me, you will have nothing from me."

Isabel looked to Grimsen, who watched the scene at the end of the room, ignoring complement the spy between them. “That's what they keeping saying to me.”

The next goblin’s words made Grimsen laughed wickedly to her. “I don’t fear you, Katharina.” She was disappointed. If he had called her ‘Katharina’, that meant he didn’t serve Diarmuid. She still didn’t know how the King discovered one of her secrets.

“I gave you a Faerie name and you do not even bother using it, Rhiannon.” The words struck the goblin as lightning. He faced her, with an uncertain gaze.

“I use it.” She replied to the blacksmith, but she continued sustaining the goblin’s gaze. “Just don’t in the way you had expected me to.” Grimsen had plans for her. But Jude Duarte had had her own plans.

Isabel skirted the table and took out of its first drawer the most dangerous and destructive weapon she had ever handled in her life. It had been tailor-made for Jude Duarte, but belonged to Rhiannon. It was golden and as reflective as human’s buildings made of steel and glass. It was sharp and had two points, one went up in the front and the other went down in her nape. Scary in its elegant simplicity and mortal aesthetics.

And, like a sword, that crown had a name, Promisebreaker.

She put her crown on her head. Grimsen loved to see his creations in action.

“Give me your oath and you will leave this room alive,” Rhiannon said. It was the voice of a queen and demanded obedience. “and ever vow you had made until now will crumble. None of your old masters will know about it. They will not feel their power over you failing. I promise you that.”

“That’s impossible.” That was better than listening to... “You are crazy.” He was lucky she had grown accustomed to the disbelief of the folk.

“This crown was made by Grimsen himself.” Rhiannon gestured toward the blacksmith. “It works.” She smiled, a creepy parody of the smile a mother would give to calm a child. “You don’t have to be scared.” But he should. “If I’m lying, you will try and no word will leave your mouth.” If she didn’t have Promisebreaker, his old oath would prevent him to vow to her.

“Why would I swear to you, a mere mortal?” She did not bother to remind him that there were only two ways out of that room.

“I’m Rhiannon, you must have heard about me, you should know, I keep all my promises.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please, send me some thought! Something it's not clear? This story is too crazy? It's going fine? It's not going fine?


	8. I keep all my promises

**_I keep all my promises._ ** She had lost the count of how many time she had repeated these exact words. When Grimsen gave her Promisebreaker, when he said what it could do, she became furious. Amazed by its power, yet furious. As a human, the Folk always saw her as a liar without honour. The promises were her way of being more.

When the faeries kneel before her with hunger in the eyes, seduced by the idea of break each one of their vows, she was the one saying the truth. At the time that they became liars, she was the one keeping her promises.

The goblin gave her his oath, but, first, he bargained for it. Many had given her their oath just to be free of the charge of their older vows, but he wanted tho free someone else for a debt. That was easy for her provide and noble of him ask for. 

The Folk had a lot of ways to acquire control over others faeries. Bargains, debt, gifts. Because of that, among servants, it was easy to find dissatisfaction, resentment or despair. The gentry was the easiest to convince, break with their own word were a temptation that they easily gave in.

Once the vow had been done, a satisfied Grinsen excused himself. The blacksmith’s work had been delated for time enough and he knew pretty well that whatever was about to happen wasn’t to knowledge.

Rhiannon took off the handcuff of the goblin. They hit the ground with a bang. “What should I call you?”

“You may call me by whatever you want, by I used to be called by Whisper.” He massaged his injured wrists, obviously relieved. The iron was to incapacitate by the pain. And he had passed a great time handcuffed waiting for her arrival. Yet he had faced her with dignity.

“You won’t come back to your old Court.” This was unusual, as she changed the loyalties of spies, Rhiannon used to sent them back to spy on their former masters. But Whisper had made a good impression on her. He would be useful for much more. “You will stay here in my mansion until I give you a mission.”

“And your promise?” His question was eager. She felt the shiver of a small thud on her spine. It was recognition. Perhaps he hadn’t acted like a fool when he entered her lands. But she could use it in her favour.

“It will be done.”

Bargain with promises was trick. Rhiannon couldn’t promise something beyond her reach. And she couldn’t promise just things that anyone could guarantee. She also couldn’t forget or go back with her word. One time, one faerie saying she broke with her word would be enough to take down everting she built.

So no matter how painful, she always kept her promises.

* * *

Like other Unseelie Courts, Diarmuid's was underground. A descendent tunnel net so dark that even Faeries need lights to see there. Adela - or Rhiannon, if you know one of her secrets, - hated it. Being surrounded by that kind of darkness was not much different from being underwater, it made her vulnerable.

As if to prove that point, a hand coming out of the shadows grabbed her wrist. There were lanterns - sprites cages - attached to the opposite wall all along the corridor. But their light wasn’t enough to human eyes saw every inch of passage.

The hold was hurtful enough so it was hard to Adela think properly. She was pulled against a breastplate. “You will never be Queen and I will tear you apart piece by piece if you dare to accept my bother proposal.” That was Nerissa, younger sister of Diarmuid and his General.

Adela’s blood ran cold. Nerissa felt more than typical Unseelie contempt for her. She had personal reasons to hate her and she had the chance of cultivated her resentment for years.

“Take your hand off me or I may cut them off.” She drew with her iron blade through the General’s forearm, who freed her. Yet, in that dark passageway, Adela was afraid. She had a geas to prevent her from growing old or getting sick, but it didn’t mean she couldn’t die. “Your brother wouldn't like to know about this incident, so don't tempt me to tell him.” Adela was under Diarmuid’s protection in his Court, attacking her was a direct offence toward him. Most servants and courtiers were not brave enough to attack her with more than words. But those like Nerissa, who were still faithful to the former Queen and despised Diarmuid, found courage in their resentment. “Or do you think he didn't punish you enough?”

Nerissa stepped back. She, more times than anyone else, had attacked Adela, sometimes before the King himself, and get punished because of it. “You will be back to be dirty before I let you sit in my mother’s throne.” Her eyes were dark as Cardan and they could burn with the same boiling intensity.

Adela cleaned the blood in her dagger on the general’s skirts. “We will see that.”

* * *

When his guards announced her and she entered Diarmuid’s chambers, she was exhausted. Physically, mentally and emotionally. He saw it the moment he laid eyes on her and, instead of making her wait, the King dismissed his companions and invited her to sit beside him.

That wasn’t unusual to her. In the Courts, under different names, she was known as Rhiannon's messenger. When she arrived the conversations fell silent and the whispers grew louder. The Queens and the Lords preferred to treat their affairs with Rhiannon with description. Which always served her well.

She sat next to him, they both turned to each other, knees touching. All about the position implying an intimate relationship that was inappropriate for a married woman but expected of a bride to be. Diarmuid caressed her cheek with the back of his hand. His cold rings gave her goosebumps.

He was beautiful, but that wasn’t a surprise. The Unseelie King was Gentry, descendent from a line as old as Mab's. And as arrogant as them too. With porcelain skin and blazing red hair, he seemed as sunlight in the middle of his shady Court. But that was Faerie, the appearance was deceiving.

“You look tired.” He spoke to her with softness and concern. Diarmuid was a monster, but he was a monster that treated her as an equal and not something below him. It had been like that since she put the crown on his head. Maybe even before that. Since the day they kissed.

Her heart sped up. It had begun. She was at a disadvantage. Whenever they talked she was at a disadvantage and she shouldn’t forget that. That time she would be risking not only her own life with every word she chose to speak to him, but her son's as well. Geas came with vulnerabilities with an annoying tendency to show up at the worst possible times, she knew that when she bargained with him. But she never expected to have Bran envolved.

“I’m tired.” That was something too simple to manipulate. Nothing that should provoke distrust. But it had been a few words, which was a mistake. That aroused his curiosity.

Diarmuid raised her chin looking into her eyes. His seemed as blue flames, blazing and hypnotic. “What ails you, my dearest?” Her heart missed a beat. He seemed so genuinely concerned about her. But she knew better. “Is there something you could use my assistance?” He was  _ probing _ .

She couldn't say yes, he wasn’t supposed to be able to help her to look for Bran. The only way it could happen was if she knew her son was with him. And she couldn’t say no, because, even if there was no way he would help her, she could use his help. 

So she decided to attack, to put him against the wall. “It’s Bran.” He didn’t even blink. “We have fought.” His brows furrowed in surprise that she presumed to be true. Bran wasn’t much to speak about his personal life. As the son of High King, an heir of Mab and growing up living with Rhiannon, talk too much was rick.

“You want to make amends with him.” Diarmuid wasn’t asking. He knew her. In all these years they had been supporters and confidants. And he had never hidden his desire for them to become more. Which made his treason worst.

She sighed heavily. “Are we here to talk about my son's stubbornness?”

“No,” He grinned, happy that she had been to one to led them the subject. “we are here because I have decided that I want to marry you and you have no more polite excuses to postpone giving me your answer.”

“Why?” The question fled from her lips and he laughed off her frustration.

“Are you asking me why I want to marry you?” She didn’t know what she had asked him, or at least she wasn’t sure. So instead of answering, she chose to just look to him with annoyance. “Always so cynical.” He took a strand of her hair and watched as it slipped between his fingers. “I never hid my desire for you.”

Her voice was strangely soft, even understanding, when she said “You've made me many proposals before, never to make me your Queen. Why now?” What she really wanted was for him to give up, for him to confess. As if that could ease the pain of what she would have to do.

And even knowing he wouldn't do any of that, she was disappointed when he continued to try to mislead her. “I came to realize that we are perfect for each other.” She felt sick with those words. Then, as if he had forgotten her many advises, he offered “If you became my Queen your son will have a Court to belong.”

“Don’t try to use my son.” She warned him.

But Diarmuid didn’t step back. The look in his eyes was one she knew quite well. He had gone too far to give up. He would go all the way no matter how painful it was. “He would be like my own then.” That reached her heart, but not the on way he expected.

They had met when he sought  Rhiannon’s  help him to kill his own mother. She hoped never to have to find out what he considered a father-son relationship. Especially if it involved Bran.

She got up knowing she couldn't take much of that anymore. She needed to buy time, and she needed him to focus on something other than that marriage. “You are in the middle of a war against the High King of Faerie.” She needed to give him a reason to say “no”. Something he could change, but not through more encounters aimed at convincing her. “I warned you that I won't help you with that. You propose to me marriage does not change that.”

She was halfway towards the door when he said, “With you at my side, we could defect him easily.” He was still furious with her for not agreeing to help him with her intelligence and spy network.

“The High King is not someone I want to have as an enemy.” And that was one of the sincerest things she said that night.

“And after I defeat the High King?” That made her stop to face him. Her blood ran cold. He was convinced that he would beat Cardan. And that would be soon. “When he was not an enemy anymore, then will you marry me, Rhiannon?” Even knowing her secret, he didn’t use that name unless he wanted her to make him a promise.

She looked to the door again. There was a small cleft opened that wasn't there before. They were being spied on.

She turned her back on the door feeling…  _ nothing _ . She knew what she was about to do, but she didn't want to be there to witness it. “If you kill the High King, I marry you.” She couldn't lie before him, which made that a promise. And everybody knew that Rhiannon kept all her promises.

Before she realised it, Diarmuid was in front of her. Placing his hand on her scruff, pulling her hair to make her face him. He looked like a flame and kissed her like hunger. Part of her wanted to want to sink her iron dagger into his heart, another wanted to shrink and cry. And there was a third, that liked to be desired like that.

Like the first time they kissed, his lips tasted like a betrayal.


	9. Betrayal

**_Betrayal_. ** There wasn’t another way to explain the pooka in Cardan’s bed. Sat in across the mattress, the High King waited for his wife return. They had not arranged a meeting place, but if she wanted discretion, they would have to meet there, in  _ their  _ room. He was eager to see Jude's face when she noticed the girl sleeping in their bed. Besides war, espionage and the secret son, they had much to discuss.

Suddenly, the sleeping pooka began to cower and whimper. Even in her sleep, she seemed completely terrified. Which was unbearable to watch. Surprising himself, Cardan came around the bed to sit beside her. He stroked her hair and, unsure of what to say, sang an improper song until her rest became peaceful again.

When the High King pulled his hand away it was shaking. And his Queen was watching him with clenched teeth and resentment glittering in her eyes.

That was amusing.

With the wave of a finger, he invited her to get close to them, so she could see the sleeping girl. At the same time, Jude beckoned toward the bedroom door, demanding that they leave. They didn't even need to talk to quarrel.

Impatiently she approached the bed, but she avoided to look in the girl direction. Angry and fierce, she stared at Cardan. “Let’s not discuss our business before your  _ guest _ .” Her disdain was vicious.

“I think you lost something, Jude.” He pulled the coverlet off the pooka, who mumbled. “Luckily, I found it before someone else did.”

First, his wife looked at Cardan as if he had gone insane. Gradually anger was replaced with confusion. And after what seemed like an unreasonably long moment, -- since he planned to cover the girl as soon as possible -- Jude looked at her.

The girl was skinny with skin dark as leather and long heavy hair matching. She had high ears like a horse's, hooves instead of feet and shins full of dense fur. On each wrist a tight white metal bracelet with no clasp. She was dressing a yellow gown. The same colour of her closed eyes, but Jude didn't need to see them to know that.

When Jude realized she was looking to her sleeping granddaughter, her knees got weak and she fell forward. With her arms uplifting her body from the surface of the mattress and her thighs pressed against its side, she stared horrified. “How did you-”

Cardan covered the girl again, afraid that the cold might wake her. “I did nothing besides be a good host for the most terrible guest ever.” He hadn't a chance to sleep after Jude left him in the early dawn. Roach had been modest when he called the young pooka a problem. Arion was the embodiment of chaos. “Don't wake her up, it was very hard to make her sleep.” He said when Jude crawled towards the girl.

“I have to take her home.” That simple but sincere choice of words stung him. She wanted to take  _ her granddaughter  _ and go to  _ her home  _ and  _ her life _ , in which Cardan didn’t belong. The hurtful part was realizing that she had excluded him so deeply that she didn't even notice she said it to him.

“Don’t you said your son was at risk? That you have little time?”

“ _ Our _ .” She corrected him, “Our son.”

“Well.” He stood and extended a hand to her. Even in the black breeches she wore, it was hard to crawl across such a large bed. “Let’s not waste your time. Arion can sleep while we talk.” She didn’t accept his offer. “You must know that as your husband, your children are mine. Arion is under my protection.” In the same way, Jude had been in Madoc’s. She knew their customs.

Jude accepted his hand and got off the bed.

They left the room with fingers intertwined. He led her toward the secret passage that once connected the King’s chamber with the love’s.

“What she said to you?” She asked.

Arion had said much about Jude. Little details, simple and everyday things that alone couldn’t make harm. But, once put together, they revealed important information about Jude’s habits, routine and occupation. Nevertheless, it was still too early to introduce some subject, there was something they should discus in particular.

“She said she has 12 years old and lives in your Court.” Jude flinched at that. “But, before that, she lived as a solitary fae with her parents. She looks like her father” who Cardan supposed be a pooka as the girl, “and her mother looked like you” Jude had a daughter that wasn’t Cardan’s by blood, and it hurt him to imagine that she could have raised the girl beside someone other than him, “just as Bran looks like me.

“She also said that Bran loves her more anything. And that you are a liar because you say you will play with her, but you never do. She taught me how to braid her hair. She talks a lot.”

Jude had no choice but to agree, “She does.”

In that long corridor with their fingers intertwined, Cardan wanted to stop time. He had forgotten how was to hear her breathing, how her hands sweated and the noise of their lips parting slightly. Little things he didn't remember taking a moment to appreciate before, but now he realized he had missed for all those years.

The High King stopped in the corridor, a place so dark that his wife couldn’t see anything. He turned to face her, nervously toying with his earring.

She furrowed her brows. “Cardan, why-”

“She didn’t know your name is Jude.” It was the first thing he could think to say and it was the wrong one.

Jude freed her hand. “Did you said that to her?”

An  unpleasant  burn started in his heart, while he was still feeling the loss of her touche. “She shouldn’t know?”

“As you saw for yourself, she is not good at keeping secrets.”

The name, that was one more thing that had kept them apart. He had sought for Jude, not by someone else. He didn't even know what name he should have sought for, though he had his suspicions. “Why would your name be a secret?”

“Jude is a joke in Faerie.” She said embarrassed.

Guilt made him answer quick. “You are not a joke.”

There was an obvious reason for her to think like that. “I’m not, but you made me one.” Cardan froze. Jude had never wanted to talk about that before. She had thrown him out of her room once when he tried to apologise. Time had made her ready. “Elfhame laughed at me.  _ You  _ laughed at me!” Cardan flinched at her wrath. Being deserved didn't make her any less painful.

“I was pretending.” Many times he wanted to say that words and not just to her. Because, while no one knew, he was still there, at the moment the Folk laughter at her, listening to that terrible symphony.

“Pretending to fool me?” She asked viciously. “Or pretending to banish me?” She knew he couldn’t deny.

“I was pretending that doing that didn't break my heart. Pretending I could stand the loneliness, but we both know I couldn't.” He hadn't stood less than six months without her. He had appeared at her door willing to beg for a chance to talk, even though he was decided to keep her away from the High Court. But she had shown up with bruises on her arms and hurt lips. He had asked what happened to her and her answer was ‘You’.

Cardan should have realized he couldn't keep her away from trouble.

“Is that why you left?” He had to ask, he had to know. “To punish me?”

“This isn’t important now.” With one hand against the wall, she passed him as if she really meant what she said.

“It's important to me!” He raised his voice surprising them both. Cardan couldn’t remember the last time he had did it. He breathed. If he didn't say it, she wouldn't notice. So he should say it in the right way. “You were all the family I had and you left me. I want to know why.” And that held her still.

For a long moment, Jude kept silent and Cardan wondered if he had actually stopped time by accident. When she began to speak, her voice was smooth yet full of sadness. “I couldn’t just stay there reduced to a failure. And I couldn’t back to Elfhame if it meant to fight you again. I'm tired of fighting with you. But, whenever we are together, we are always fighting.”

She waited for an answer, but he had none to give.

_ We are always fighting.  _ Even at that moment.

Jude moved in direction of the old lover’s chamber. But she couldn’t run from him anymore. They had more to discuss and she had to share some secrets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Are you enjoying Secrets and Betrayals?  
> Do you think Jude and Cardan will be able to stop fighting and end up together?


	10. Secrets

_**Secrets** _ were the base of the life she had constructed. Giving up, even if just some of them, felt dangerous. But which choice she had? To help her, to save Bran, Cardan must know some of them. Maybe she could have saved their son that alone before but, after her last meeting with Diarmuid, it was too late. She needed an ally.

Far from her — as if he had stopped after her confession — Cardan mumbled. She turned to look at him, but it was too dark to see. “Cardan?” For a moment there was no reply and then the sound of steps moving toward her. She took the dagger without think.

Cardan grabbed the wrist that held the dagger. The grip was firm but without hurting. He pulled it away to get close, but not like an attacker would do, which was the main reason she hadn’t stabbed him between the ribs. “I said ‘we do more than fight’.” He drove her until the wall. “I missed you.” He declared, first wrathful and then desolate, “I missed you so much.”

She couldn’t see him, but she felt his warm breath on her throat and then his lips — kissing, sucking the skin. She stuck the dagger in the wall so she didn't lose it. She drew him down by the scruff and kissed him in the mouth.

Like the day before, they lose themselves in the kisses and soon the kisses became more. But this time, the High King and the High Queen of Faerie didn’t end up in the ground. She wrapped her legs around him throwing her weight against the wall and grabbing his shoulders

He purred while his hands slid through her thighs until her but. “You always had a tight grip.”

“And you always talked too much.”

She didn’t need to see to know he was smirking. “Because I know it arouses you.” She tried to kiss him again to shut him up, but Cardan drifted his torso away. “Did you missed me or you were just playing with me last night?”

Whether it was with a lie or the truth, she didn’t want to answer that. “Why are you asking me that?”

“I want to know.”

With a heavy sigh, she let her legs unroll and she leaned away from him as much as she could, which thanks to the wall on his back wasn't much. “You keep forgetting that I can lie.”

“What a luxury” He replied with bitterness. “is to know that every time I said ‘I loved you’ I spoke the truth.”

It was not a luxury, not to her. It just made more disturbing to leave him. It made hard to listen to those same words. And, above everything else, it made painfully obvious to her that she was unable to say the same to him. Even when she wanted. “Most of the time Arion is shy. I like to embroider. I missed you.”

“Two lies, one true?” He mocked.

“Yes.” She could not have been more solemn than that.

* * *

When they arrive, the old lover chambers were almost empty, except for a four-seater table with chairs accompanying. The wood was old and worn, but it didn't look like the kind of furniture that had good times before. With the curtains closed, there were only candles to light the place. Everything was in the centre of the room, including two spies.

Roach and Bomb were sat there chatting and laughing. But they stopped when she entered the room. The Bomb smiled at her and Roach crossed his arms with an indecipherable expression in his face.

“Nice hair.” The pixie provoked. The Queen’s hair made obvious what she and her King had done on their way there.

Once that kind of provocation could make her easily blush, but it had been long ago. “I’m letting it grow.”

Cardan sat facing the wardrobe, where the secret passage was hide, letting the seat with backs turned to the wardrobe to her. For a strategist in hostile territory, the message was explicit — they had the advantage — and they want her to know.

She sat in the determined seat. The table had a plate with slices of cheese, another with oatcakes, a jar of honey, a bottle of wine and a teapot on display. As soon as she sat down and saw that her stomach growled. For a long time, she had not rushed like that — denying herself meals or nights sleep. The first years as  Rhiannon had been hard and demanding. But it wasn’t like that anymore.

“You mastered the slyfooting.” Roach nodded in appreciation.

“It's been so long. What have you been up to?” Bomb asked in a mischievous way.

Cardan served two cups of tea, placing one before her, then he leaned back in his chair and drank his own.

All the eyes were in her.

That would be hard, but it did not need to be slow. “After I was banished, Grimsen came to me in the mortal world.”

The question came quickly, as a reflection, “ _ When _ ?”

“Before you.” That's what her husband really wanted to know. “Grimsen said that once he made a crown that changed the power balance in the world, it made him a legend. And he wanted to do it once more.”

Bomb smiled. “Ambitious.”

Cardan just watched unmoved.

“I bargained with him. I received a crown and a new name.”

“ Rhiannon.” The spies said in unison. They had satisfaction in their voices.

She sighed. “Rhiannon.” Her whereabouts had been a mystery of nearly a hundred years that Arion had probably helped them solve on one night.

“You became pretty famous.”

“And successful.”

“And you made everything under our noses for all this time.”

As spies, they praised her for her achievement. But they were more than that to her they had been her first friends in Faerie. They deserved more, even if she wouldn’t apologies, “I couldn’t stay there in the mortal world. I couldn’t be  _ Nothing _ . So I left.”

“It wasn’t a surprise me when you left.” Roach startled not just her, but Cardan as well. “You had always been ambitious.” And those words made a monstrous resentment shine in High King eyes. “Your crown, is it just something pretty or Grimsen made you something special?”

Nothing was just pretty in Faerie.

“It’s not as the Blood Crown, it can’t contain oaths. But it can break previous vows and debts.” That wasn’t hard to imagine what Grimsen had in mind when he made that crown.  Promisebreaker had been made to defeat the Blood Crown. In that game, Jude and Cardan were supposed to be pawns. She could have been insulted if she hadn't felt so praised. The blacksmith thought that Jude, moved by hatred and heartbroken, would be enough takedown Elfhame. But she didn’t play her part as his pawn. She became a legend in her own way. “Not much after I had left Vivi and Oak, I was making business in a market when a hag approached to inform me that  I was pregnant . She also made a prediction” The Queen studied her King waiting for his reaction to her next words, “about the future of my child with my faerie husband — a  _ King  _ faerie husband.”

Cardan placed the cup in the table emotionless, “Diarmuid wants to marry you because of that prediction. He knows it.”

She nodded. “And I don't know how he found out.” Her voice sounded as if she was apologizing and it embarrassed her. She felt like she had failed and then failed again when she didn’t fix the situation by herself. She had always believed Bran would be safer with her than on Elfhame. She  _ chose  _ to believe it.

But none of that was what had troubled Cardan. “What the hag said?”

“You don’t need to know.” She never wanted it to define her son life as the star chart had defined Cardan’s. “No one needed to know. I don't want a prediction to define the way you will treat him.”

“You are planning to leave him in Elfhame.” His tone was outraged as if he didn't want Bran there with him.

She would have to fight even for that. “Which is his rightful place.”

“Why should I shelter him?” Cardan asked with sneering. “Why would I help to rescue him? An heir of Mab in enemy hands is a problem. But you said yourself, Diarmuid will kill him when he discovers it.”

Spreading her hands on the table she stood up. She looked at him and for a moment Cardan flinched under her stare. “You will shelter him because he is your son.” She informed undisturbedly. “And will rescue him because he is your son.

“If you need one more reason, you will do that because I will help you to win your war.” Her heart was racing. Her hands were sweating. “And if even it isn’t enough, you will do that because of Diarmuid’s desire to see you dead is renovated.” Her mouth was dried. She felt sick. “Since I promised him that I would marry him if he kills you.”

Roach choked with an oatcake and Bomb spit wine in the floor. For a moment Cardan's mask fell. She wanted it there again, hiding is perplexity and pain. “Why would you-?”

“I was in check, now I put someone else in check.” It was just something she knew she had to do to have her son back.

She sat down and finally drank her tea, which made the hunger more real. She ate while he thought. It was up to him. But Cardan didn’t seem pleased and she was afraid that even the promise of a solution to a war that seemed impossible to be won wouldn’t be enough to convince him. Maybe that was why she said the next words. “Diarmuid is willing to give me everything my heart desires. There is only one thing he cannot offer me — to be the father of my son.” Cardan raised an eyebrow to that.

“Let’s bargain,  _ Rhiannon _ .” While Cardan could make her felt adored saying 'Jude', he also made her felt mocked saying ‘Rhiannon’

“What do you want?”

Cardan raised his hand showing four richly ornate fingers. “I want a way to win this war as soon as possible and efficiently — As you said, my enemies support him. They organized themselves. This war does not end until this organization is ruined.”

She had offered him that already, there was no need for haggling. “It can be done.”

Cardan lowered one finger. “You says that you don’t know how Diarmuid found about the prediction, which I supposed was one well-kept secret.  _ You _ have a leak, but you said that I couldn't trust  _ my spies. _ You have eyes in me and I want who they are.”

For a moment she considered denying it, but he was smart and she desperate. That was not a good time to test him. “They are my servants, I will not simply point them out to be punished. However, I'll get them out of Elfhame.”

“No, you will not. I want them. They will vow to me again. If it puts your mind at ease I won’t punish them for spying me to you.” It didn’t put her mind at ease. Not completely, at least. Her spies would be just fine because Cardan wanted to use them to learn about her. And she knew that even with the vows made to her, he could take something from them.

That why that was harder to acquiesce. “It can be done.” He a second finger.

“And you won’t infiltrate your spies into High Court evermore.” This was inevitable after the previous requirement, so she acquiesced once more and he lowered another finger. “If you want to know about me or about Elfhame you come to talk to me about it. Which brings us to the next point. If your son will stay in Elfhame, you must be present before the High Court as the mother of the prince.”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

He shook his little finger, the last one still standing. “The High Court already knows you as Jude Duarte. There is no reason to change that part. If you promise me all that, in return, I will help to rescue our son and accept him in High Court.” It would be just another name, just another court. Or at least that's what she told herself. But Elfhame was like no other place, there had been her place of failure and shame. Things she didn't want to face. Even so, she made her promised. “Now tell us what you have in mind.”

And so she did.

She put all the cards she had of that game in the table. They discussed the plan, dissected it. Improved it. Once the reunion was over it was almost sunset, the cheese and oatcakes were gone, the bottle of wine and the teapot were empty and everything was settled. She felt herself…  _ Jude Duarte _ . And it was not a bad feeling.

“Bran will love Elfhame.” She was still sat when Bomb stood up to hug her, throwing her arms around the Queen’s neck and then squeezing. The affection in the acts stole her breath away.

The spy is gone before she could return the gest.

Roach clapped his hand in his Queen’s back. “You became a fierce mother, kid.” He slimed at her and left the room.

She looked toward the main door, knowing that her husband was watching her. She couldn't move. She couldn't  _ think  _ of moving. She'd felt that way before — It was the exhaustion after the  jolt of adrenaline. The challenging part had been done, now it was a matter of waiting for the worse part.

They returned to the High King chamber in silence. Her sleepless night was finally charging their price. She was tired to the point of feeling dizzy. It was the pressure of Cardan's hand on her back that kept the pace of her steps. He drove her until High King chambers and then until the side of the bed where Arion had rolled to the middle of the mattress.

He sat and dragged her down to his lap. “You should rest.”

“I should go.” She said, but she didn’t try to leave his embrace. He was warm, cosy and smelled like moss and oakwood. She put her nose to his neck and took a deep breath.

Cardan  yawned and lied them down. “You don’t want to fight me? So just don’t.”

She lied to herself that she would expect him to sleep to leave. But she was too tired and when she closed her eyes, she was already sleeping.

What woke her up was the sound of chaos which could also be known as Arion. She was laughing and jumping in the mattress beside her. Nothing of that was a surprise. She had lost the count of how many times she had wake up like that. Even Cardan smells on the pillow was something she had imagined more times than she could remember.

It was just when she heard his voice that she remember where she was.

“You should let her sleep,” Cardan spoke with authority.

“She slept enough already.” Arion retorted.

“Stop to jump in that bed right now.” He commanded and Arion, that never listened to anyone, listened to him.

“ _I’m_ _bored_.” The complaint was too childish for her age, all her behaviour was.

Still lied down, she felt her cheeks flush. She never wanted to look in his face again but she sat and did just that. “How long I slept?”

Arion threw herself on her, passing the arms around the neck and then squeezing “You slept a full night and a day and a night again. Bran’s father is nice, but I want to go home.”

The Queen saw when the King looked away from their hug. “You should have woke me up.”

Cardan shrugged. “You needed rest.” He looked at Arion back. He must have realized how dangerous it was to let the girl know of important things. “It already began.”

His wife sighed with relief and tightened her embrace around her granddaughter.

It was time for the waiting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry for the delay in the chapter. (And if you're thinking he's not so neat, I'll agree with you.)  
> I took two of my wisdom teeth and my mind was scattered for a few days and that was one of the reasons it takes so long. The other reason was that this chapter was longer than the previous ones.  
> Today I will take two more wisdom teeth and probably be scattered again.


End file.
